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Bill Graham (January 8, 1931 – October 25, 1991) was a German-American impresario and rock concert promoter from the 1960s until his death in 1991 in a helicopter crash. In 1941 he was sent from Germany to France to escape the Holocaust. At age 10 he settled in a foster home in the Bronx, New York. Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and from City College with a business degree. In the early 1960s, he moved to San Francisco, and, in 1965, began to manage The San Francisco Mime troupe. He had teamed up with local Haight Ashbury promoter Chet Helms and Family Dog, and their network of contacts to organize a benefit concert, then promoted several free concerts. This eventually turned into a profitable full-time career and he assembled a talented staff. Graham had a profound influence around the world, sponsoring the musical renaissance of the '60s from the epicenter, San Francisco. Chet Helms then Bill Graham made famous the Fillmore and Winterland Arena; these turned out to be a proving grounds for rock bands and acts of the San Francisco Bay area including the Grateful Dead, Jefferson Airplane, and Big Brother and the Holding Company with Janis Joplin who were first managed, and in some cases developed, by Chet Helms. ==Early life== Graham was born Wulf Wolodia Grajonca in Berlin,〔Glatt, John. ''Rage & Roll: Bill Graham and the Selling of Rock''. Birch Lane Press, 1993. p. 3〕 the youngest child and only son of lower middle-class parents, Frieda (''née'' Sass) and Yankel Grajonca, who 〔(Bill Graham profile ), jewishvirtuallibrary.org; accessed February 10, 2014.〕 had emigrated from Russia before the rise of Nazism. His father died two days after his son's birth.〔("Bill Graham, Rock Impresario, Dies at 60 in Crash" ), ''New York Times'' obituary; accessed February 10, 2014.〕 Graham was nicknamed "Wolfgang" by his family early in life.〔 Due to the increasing peril to Jews in Germany, Graham's mother placed her son and her youngest daughter, Tolla, in a Berlin orphanage, which sent them to France in a pre–Holocaust exchange of Jewish children for Christian orphans. Graham's older sisters stayed behind with their mother. After the fall of France, Graham was among a group of Jewish orphans spirited out of France, some of whom finally reached the USA. But a majority, including Tolla Grajonca, did not survive the difficult journey. He was one of the One Thousand Children (OTC), those mainly Jewish children who managed to flee Hitler and Europe, and come directly to North America, but whose parents were forced to stay behind. Nearly all these OTC parents were killed by the Reich. Graham's mother died at Auschwitz. Graham had five sisters, Rita, Evelyn, Sonia, Ester and Tolla, the elder four of whom survived the Holocaust. Rita and Ester moved to the United States and were close to Graham in his later life. Evelyn and Sonia escaped the Holocaust, first to Shanghai, and later, after the war, to Europe. Once in the United States, Graham was placed in a foster home in The Bronx in New York City. After being taunted as an immigrant and being called a Nazi because of his German accented English, Graham worked on his accent, eventually being able to speak in a perfect New York accent. He changed his name to sound more "American." (He found "Graham" in the phone book - it was the closest he could find to his birth surname, "Grajonca". According to Graham, both "Bill" and "Graham" were meaningless to him). Graham graduated from DeWitt Clinton High School and then obtained a business degree.〔Kipen, David. ("Flawed look at career of blacklisted director" ), ''San Francisco Chronicle'', August 29, 2001; accessed September 14, 2009. "The American 20th century went to high school at DeWitt Clinton High in the Bronx. Multicultural before there was a name for it – at least a polite one – Clinton nurtured such figures as Graham, James Baldwin, George Cukor, Neil Simon and Abraham Lincoln Polonsky."〕 He was later quoted as describing his training as that of an "efficiency expert". Graham was drafted into the United States Army in 1951, and served in the Korean War, where he was awarded both the Bronze Star and Purple Heart. Upon his return to the States he worked as a waiter/maître d' in Catskill Mountain resorts in upstate New York during their heyday. He was quoted saying that his experience as a maître d' and with the poker games he hosted behind the scenes was good training for his eventual career as a promoter. Tito Puente, who played some of these resorts, went on record saying that Graham was avid to learn Spanish from him, but only cared about the curse words.〔(Official Bill Graham Foundation website ), billgrahamfoundation.org; accessed February 10, 2014.〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Bill Graham (promoter)」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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